Public Ledger

Story of Love and Royalty.
[Correspondence of the New York Mail.]

A leading weekly journal professes to give, "on reliable authority," the reason why the King of Bavaria is, at the mature age of twenty-six, still unmarried, namely: That he is in love with the pretty prima donna of Berlin, Fraulein Mallinger. During a residence of nearly a year in Munich I never once heard that the King was suffering from misplaced affection. That he is waiting to find a princess who can sympathize with him in his admiration of Wagner and the "Music of the Future" is another reason frequently given in French and American journals for his state of single blessedness. If appreciation of "Tannhauser" and "Lohengrin" is the only qualification that King Louis desires in his wife, surely he might have been satisfied with his cousin Sophie, to whom he was engaged five or six years ago, for she, it is well known, was enthusiastic in her admiration for the solid operas of this great and eccentric composer, and often distinguished herself in court circles by her impersonations of his heroines. It is well known that during the days of their betrothal she frequently sung Elsa in costume, the King taking the part of Lohengrin. A very absurd story has met with some believers in Munich. Princess Sophie, it seems, was very fond of dried fruit, and ate in enormous quantities. King Louis, like a devoted lover, imported it for her from Italy, but on the condition that she should never eat prunes in his presence, as that fruit was offensive to him. The Princess could not or would not control her penchant to conform to the fastidious taste of the "Fairy Prince," and regardless of his desires, that fruit was served one day when the royal fiances were dining at her residence of Possenhofen. Upon receiving the obnoxious prunes the King rose from the table, left the castle without a word of farewell, and returning to his own castle of Berg, on the opposite side of the lake, threw the Princess' bust out of the window into the water, and wrote to her father (Duke Max) that he released his cousin from her engagement. Whatever was the real cause of the dissolution of the engagement King Louis generously allowed his cousin to say that it was broken off at her request. She has since married the Duke d'Alencon, grandson of Louis Philippe.